


You Can't Fool A Boggart

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, Boggarts, F/M, Intrigue, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not What It Looks Like, Pining, Post-War, Romance, Strong Hermione Granger, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 08:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30001755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Lucius Malfoy has served two thirds of his prison sentence and is now being considered for probation. But, the probation process requires prisoners to fully participate in all stages of the programme, and to all intents and purposes Lucius is failing to comply with everything involved. Hermione Granger needs to find out why. After all, people very rarely do things without a reason.....
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Lucius Malfoy
Kudos: 31
Collections: 2021 DBQ Round One: Boggart





	You Can't Fool A Boggart

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [TheSlytherinCabal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSlytherinCabal/pseuds/TheSlytherinCabal) in the [DBQ2021Round1](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DBQ2021Round1) collection. 



> Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me but are the property of J.K.R. and Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended. The theme for this round of the competition was Boggart and my chosen pairing was Lucius Malfoy/Hermione Granger. Comments/Reviews are encouraged by The Slytherin Cabal's Admin Team on all stories in Death By Quill, but comments left by readers are set to be moderated by story authors until the end of the competition in order to protect participants' anonymity. Thank you to my beta for their time and help.

“Good afternoon,” Lucius Malfoy reclined elegantly in his chair as Hermione Granger paused in the doorway of Azkaban prison’s main interrogation room. He arched one perfect, aristocratic eyebrow in satisfaction. Clearly, she hadn’t expected him to arrive before her and having the immediate upper hand suited him perfectly. 

She recovered and eyed his arrogant smirk with disdain. He’d wondered if her dislike of him had mellowed over time and was dismayed to find that it had not. 

“Mr. Malfoy,” she acknowledged coolly, rearranging the folders she was carrying and striding confidently to her side of the interrogation table. 

She laid out her paperwork, purposely ignoring him. Lucius sat forward in his chair, changing his posture to signal his interest and noting that her breathing faltered in response. “It’s alright, Miss Granger, I’m securely cuffed,” he held out a hand to demonstrate, “since I’m also wandless, I’m quite unable to harm you.”

“I’m not concerned for my safety,” she said primly. 

He smirked again to cover his relief, “good.” He sat back in his chair to consider her further. He knew that Draco had asked her to conduct this interview in his and Harry’s place, claiming that family ties prevented him from doing so himself and that Potter was otherwise engaged. He also knew that she had only agreed to it under duress. Draco had won eventually, though. Lucius smiled, his son had always been persuasive, and this time, he had outdone himself.

“Mr. Malfoy.” Hermione shuffled her papers then looked up at him through her dark eyelashes. Lucius wasn’t surprised by the surge of arousal the sight provoked in him. “I’m here to talk about your potential probation. You have served three years out of a five-year prison sentence, and so far, you’ve been a model prisoner. You have an exemplary track record.”

He said nothing as he listened, just steepled his fingers together over his crossed legs and regarded her thoughtfully. “You have passed your psychological and physical examinations, and also your Veritaserum and Legilimency interrogations. There is however, one set of test results that need further clarification before we can approve you for probation.”

Lucius remained silent. He knew she wanted him to speak, but he was enjoying the way his silence disconcerted her. “Do you intend to talk to me at all during this interview, Mr. Malfoy?” she asked after a lengthy pause.

“That depends,” he said at length.

“On what?” 

He hid his amusement at her snappy retort and lifted one lazy brow. “The questions you ask.”

Hermione closed her eyes, let out a slow breath, and nodded. “Fine. But, you failed your Boggart test due to noncompliance, and you’re not doing much better on that front now. Lucius, you cannot be considered for probation unless you consent to retake the Boggart test in a more helpful manner.”

“I see.” His responses were guarded as he waited for the opening he wanted. It would come, he was sure.

“Will you retake the test more openly?”

“No.”

“Lucius,” she stood up and stamped her foot rather like Draco did when he was particularly riled up. Frustration was getting the better of her, but Lucius wasn’t concerned. That just meant she would lower her guard sooner. “I don’t know what you're trying to achieve by behaving this stubbornly, but it would help your case considerably if you were to comply.”

“And why would I  _ want  _ to comply, Miss Granger?”

She blinked her obscenely long lashes once more, opened her mouth, closed it again, and finally huffed. In response, Lucius bit the inside of his cheek and carefully wiped the amusement from his face. “Well, if you want to rot away in here for the rest of your life, that’s fine with me. I don’t understand, though! Don’t you want to see your son again? Don’t you want your  _ freedom _ back?”

He smiled. There, that was the opening he’d been waiting for. “Very much so.”

“Then quit being so obtuse!” 

She shoved her hair roughly back behind her ears, and he imagined tangling his fingers deeply into her sumptuous chocolate curls, pulling her close, then leaning in to kiss her…. “No,” he said simply, leaning back in his chair and fixing her with his cool grey stare.

“Why not?!” 

“Ah-ha.” He fixed his stormy eyes properly onto hers for the first time. She backed up a step, bumping into her chair and sitting down again as she faltered under the intensity of his gaze. “Now that’s a better question.”

She looked like she wanted to curse him. She was so frustrated that her hair frizzed with magic, and sparks shot from the end of her wand. His laugh was low and dangerous as he regarded her affectionately. “Tell me, is it a Gryffindor trait to have such little control over your emotions, or is it just something that you personally struggle with?”

Hermione put her hands flat on the table and leaned forward to glare forcefully at him, “Lucius, if you don’t tell me why you failed your Boggart test yet passed everything else so  easily, then I’m walking out of here now and taking your only chance of early release with me.”

The corners of Lucius’ mouth tugged up into a genuine smile. “Good girl,” he said very deliberately. He caught the infinitesimal expansion of her pupils and hid his satisfaction. Playing with her was proving very rewarding, and Draco was right. She did indeed have a praise kink.

“I was waiting for you to ask me  _ why _ I apparently failed that test, and now that you have, I’ll explain. I passed the physical and psychological tests easily. I am, after all, healthy and of sound mind. However, I fooled the Legilimency and Veritaserum tests with Occlumency and doctored memories, as have all the other Death Eaters who have taken them. One cannot fool a Boggart, so I simply used Occlumency to keep my fears private.” He leaned forwards in his chair again, noting that this time she didn’t pull away from him. 

“I didn’t fail that Boggart test, Miss Granger. I  _ passed _ it. The Boggart didn’t know what to do when it saw me, so it formed itself into a grey cloak, the cloak of my Occlumency shield. The cloak split.  _ That  _ was my fear. The inside of the cloak appeared to be full of clowns which spilled out and juggled Death Eater masks because that was the image I used to cast my Riddikulus spell.”

Lucius tamped down the urge to use his own Legillency to find out what she was thinking, she was inching closer to him, and he didn’t think she was even aware of it. She blinked. “You fooled the Legilimency and Veritaserum tests?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. It seemed she really was a quick learner. “They were intrusive.”

She stared at him, still clearly exasperated. Draco and Harry were likely in for the tongue lashing of their lives for putting her up to this interview. Lucky boys. “Lucius, the tests are meant to be intrusive,” she paused to massage her temples as though he was giving her a headache, “that's the whole point of them!!”

“Tell me, Hermione,” he rolled her given name across his tongue as he spoke, enjoying the way it disconcerted her further, “how many other Death Eaters have you used these tests on?”

“Draco, Theodore Nott-”

He held up a hand and interrupted her, “forgive me, I meant real Death Eaters.”

“Fine. Antonin Dolohov, Hephaestus Mulciber, Rodolphus Lestrange, and now you.”

He nodded. “And did we  _ all  _ pass?”

“Yes.”

“And are you aware that a skilled Occlumens can block even the highest grade of Veritaserum? and that the most skilled Legilimens known to the Ministry wouldn’t stand a chance against any of those men, myself included?” His satisfaction grew as he watched the blood drain from her face. “Miss Granger, Tom Riddle was the best mind magician this world has ever seen, and he taught all of his early followers everything he knew.

She couldn't mask the horror that his words induced. Nor could she cover the way her eyes and body responded to his words. He sighed with relief as her chest heaved on a shaky inhale, and she swallowed hard. She might be currently fighting it, but she was definitely attracted to him, and his dark past wasn’t putting her off in the slightest.

“Miss Granger,” Lucius said, changing his tone to a much softer one, “does this not tell you something of our characters? The other men you just named took the tests and manipulated the Ministry in return for their relative freedoms. The only one who has so far told you the truth is me.”

  
  


* * *

Lucius waited for her to return. She had requested a break and had fled the room as soon as she was given permission. The one remaining guard watched him disdainfully from the corner of the room, but Lucius didn’t care. He was just hoping she’d come back. 

He was hoping he hadn’t pushed too hard and scared her away.

Finally, the door banged open, and she looked at him appraisingly as he sighed in relief. “I’ve arranged for you to repeat the Boggart test with myself adjudicating it. Are you willing to retake it, _ properly _ , under those conditions?”

Fear flickered across his face before he had a chance to pull his walls into place. Her look of mild surprise told him that she’d noticed his slip. “Yes,” he said, irritated by his brief lack of composure.

“Good.” She signaled to a pair of guards, and between them, they carried a large packing crate into the room. The Boggart inside banged alarmingly as the crate was set down on the stone floor. 

“Everyone else leaves,” Lucius demanded. 

“Fine.” 

She hadn’t argued, so he pushed his luck one step further, “and my cuffs are removed.”

She stared at him in confusion, “no one else has asked for that concession. I’ll just set them to allow you to use defensive magic-”

He shook his head. “Hermione, my cuffs come off, or there’s no deal.”

“Are you really in a position to negotiate this?” she asked, although now she looked amused by his demands rather than annoyed. He held his position, and her eyes until she nodded. “Fine! Give me your hands.” 

He felt the warmth of her skin and the tingle of her magic as she removed the uncomfortable magic dampening cuffs from his wrists. He flexed his hands, feeling his considerable power surge freely through his veins, and took the wand she passed him. His wand. Oh, how he’d missed it. He smiled. “Are you ready, Miss Granger?”

“Again, shouldn’t I be asking you that?” She raised a brow, and he laughed. She seemed to have grown more relaxed in his presence after his earlier confession, and she didn't seem to mind his taking control of the situation either. 

He wondered if that willingness to surrender control extended to any other areas of her life, then forced several unbidden images out of his head. Hermione Granger spreadeagled naked, and begging for him to take her on a St. Andrews cross was not an image conducive to facing a boggart. 

“In this case, I think not.” Lucius considered the packing crate with trepidation. “Open the crate.”

He heard her whisper, “Alohomora,” the lid of the crate lifted, then the Boggart flopped unceremoniously to the floor. He heard Hermione’s squeak of surprise, followed by her sharp intake of breath as she struggled to process what she was seeing.

Lucius sighed. Even though he’d been expecting it, it wasn’t a pretty sight. 

Boggart Hermione was lying, as she had once done on his drawing-room floor, screaming and twitching as she had while Lucius’ own deranged sister-in-law had viciously tortured her. 

On that fateful day back in 1996, Narcissa had frozen him under a body-bind curse to stop him from rescuing her, and all he had been able to do was cast a wandless, nonverbal spell to stop her from bleeding out and dying from her wounds. 

Although Lucius knew that he wasn’t really paralyzed by a body-bind curse today, he felt exactly as if he were. He staggered, blinded by his feelings, falling forwards onto his knees and helplessly watching the Boggart image grow more potent as his own power weakened. 

He gasped as the real Hermione stepped in front of him. 

The Boggart immediately morphed into Bellatrix herself, bearing down on Hermione with her wand held high, but Hermione cast her Riddikulus, and Bellatrix was suddenly wearing a pink tutu and dancing a jig. The image lasted mere seconds before Boggart Bellatrix vanished in a puff of grey smoke. 

He watched, transfixed as the real Hermione turned shocked eyes on him, and he sighed once more. Here he was, Lucius Malfoy, the once regal, proud Lord of the Manor, brought literally to his knees by a memory. 

The memory of the only girl he’d ever loved being tortured by a lunatic.

“I think you’ve got some explaining to do,” she said haltingly as he got up, strode across the room to the equally surprised looking guard, blasted an Obliviate in his face, and slammed the door as he left.

  
  


* * *

She came back the next day. He’d known she would. After all, she was nothing if not tenacious. She looked as if she’d barely slept, but then neither had he. He’d tossed and turned all night, assaulted by terrible memories until he’d thought he was losing his mind.

“Are you okay?” she asked, handing him a cup of coffee. He looked at it in surprise, touched by her thoughtfulness.

“Yes, thank you. Are you?”

She nodded, staring down into her cup. “Now that I’ve got over the surprise of yesterday, I’m fine. But I’d like an explanation for it, please.”

He nodded, sipping from his mug and starting to speak. She surprised him by listening well. He’d been expecting her to jump in and interrupt, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat quietly as he opened up completely, the way he had refused to do yesterday. 

He explained how his initial interest in her had grown into a preoccupation that had changed his views on muggleborns, and then had finally morphed into a love that had helped him survive the tough years of Voldemort’s reign of terror. 

He explained that his marriage to Narcissa had been a sham. It was a union born of his parent’s desire to uphold traditions rather than a bond made out of love. Hermione listened as he told how he had grown to despise Narcissa’s obsession with keeping up appearances and how the body bind she had restrained him with the day Hermione had been tortured had sounded the final, irreversible death knell to their union. 

Hermione’s eyes widened as he told her how he would rather have died in a fight to save her than to stand helplessly by as he had been forced to do. 

He told her how grateful he was that she had spoken at his trial, and how the kindness that she had shown him had carried him through the long years of his imprisonment. 

Finally, he watched tears fall from her eyes as he told her that the only person he had ever revealed any of this to was his son, and he shivered as she reached across the desk, putting her hand over his as she finally broke her silence. “Draco sent me here to do these interviews with you,” she admitted. “It could have been anyone from the rehab program, but he insisted it be me. He knew you wouldn’t have retaken that Boggart test for anyone other than me, didn’t he?”

Lucius nodded as Hermione watched him, searching his eyes with her own. He forced himself to keep his shields low to let her see the truth. “Draco knows how I feel. He pushed mine and Narcissa’s divorce through for us. He has given his blessing to Narcissa and her new husband’s union. He wants to see me happy too.”

He could hardly dare to breathe as he waited for Hermione’s response. Her hand was still covering his, and he swore that it was the most comforting thing he had ever felt. She stroked her thumb gently over his skin, and his breath caught. 

“Lucius?” she asked, looking up as he nodded.

“One day, I’ll tell you my side of things. I knew that someone cast a spell to stop me bleeding to death that day. I just never knew who it was. I’ll be honest, I thought it was Draco, or maybe even Narcissa, but I’m glad that it was you. You're a frustrating man, Lucius Malfoy, infuriating and maddening too, but I’ve never known anyone lay themselves open in the way that you just did. I appreciate it.” 

Lucius nodded, hardly daring to believe what was happening. He gently tugged her hand and pulled her closer to him. She ended up sitting in his lap, with her head pressed to his chest, listening to his heart. The heart that was only still beating because of its love for her. 

She let him wrap his arms around her as he shivered with emotion. He kissed her wild chocolate curls and gazed down at her in wonder. “Where do we go from here, Hermione?” he whispered, and she looked up to meet his gaze, then slowly, wordlessly pressed her lips to his. 

The whole world stopped for a moment. She surrounded him completely. Lucius was overcome with emotion as he kissed her briefly back. 

All too soon she pulled away. She didn't answer either, but that was okay. 

It was enough for him just to hold her in his arms. The rest of the world and reality itself could wait. If he got his probation and his freedom as he hoped, they would have plenty of time in the future to work things out.


End file.
